it's all about the story, possums…

It is a really exciting time to be writing Science Fiction in Australia. SF is on TV screens – Glitch, The Kettering Incident and Clever Man. Horror and SF films are doing really well. They’re selling overseas – Babadook is one of our most successful recent exports and is solidly genre. – Catherine S. McMullen with David Tiley, Screen Hub. More:

For those who think of Australia culturally as the USA’s 51st state, researchers conclude: The belief that Australia is a proportional, perfectly formed microcosm of American cultural preferences is shown to be largely unsubstantiated. – Don Groves, IF Magazine. More:

Wonder Woman 2 will be first film to officially adopt new PGA policies on sexual harassment. It is our obligation to change our culture and eradicate this abuse. The Producers Guild of America’s Anti-Sexual Harassment Guidelines are sanctioned as best practices for our members. – PGA. More:

In Rey’s melody, people have located allusions to the Star Wars main theme, and to the leitmotifs of Darth Vader, Kylo Ren, the emperor, and the Force. Fans are using this tactic to predict what will happen with Rey’s character on a narrative level. – Frank Lehman/Marykate Jasper, The Mary Sue. More:

Created by Apricot Films’ visionary producer / director Gwen Wynne, EOS is a response to the crisis involving the severe lack of women helmers in cinema.

Gwen Wynne’s EOS World Fund seeks out material and artists who are known for their unusual, innovative and provocative cinematic work, in both form and content.

Scorsese’s Film Foundationhas just awarded a restoration grant to Mark Toscano at the Academy Film Archives, to photochemically restore Nina Menkes’ feature film, QUEEN OF DIAMONDS (1991). Grants are given to work that is considered “culturally and historically significant”.

Martin McDonagh wrote ‘Three Billboards‘while travelling between New York and LA via Santa Fe and Montana. “I write by hand on notepads,” he muses, “And at the top of each page I write whichever country or state I’m in. This script was like a road map of America. – Rhiana Davies-Cotter and James Mottram, FilmInk. More:

As a bare-minimum metric, the Bechdel Test does a good job of showing how amazingly far Hollywood is from gender equality. But it isn’t going to push the industry toward an identifiable goal. Many films that pass the Bechdel Test failed most of these new tests. – Walt Hickey, Ella Koeze, Rachael Dottle & Gus Wezerek, FiveThirtyEight. More: